How can this benefit anyone? I mean it could effect Christians (you know this is all about Christians) or anyone with refusal of insurance for anyone or anything. The potential for prejudice is amazing. Of course they would only do it for birth control right right?

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WASHINGTON -- Unbowed by the dust-up from last week’s contraception debate, the Obama administration has jumped feet-first into the next round.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, in a statement to The Huffington Post, weighed in heavily against a toughly-worded measure being considered in the Senate that would greatly restrict women's access to critical health care services.

"Let's be clear about what's at stake," said Carney. "The proposal being considered in the Senate applies to all employers -- not just religious employers. And it isn't limited to contraception. Any employer could restrict access to any service they say they object to. That is dangerous and it is wrong. Decisions about medical care should be made by a woman and her doctor, not a woman and her boss.”

The measure, proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) would amend the Affordable Care Act to allow any employer to exclude any health service coverage, no matter how critical or basic, by claiming that it violates their religious or moral convictions. Moreover, according to the National Women's Law Center, the amendment would remove critical non-discrimination protections from the Affordable Care Act. For instance, an insurer could deny maternity care coverage to a same-sex couple, an interracial couple or a single woman for religious or moral reasons.

Coming just days after last week's debate over the White House decision that religious-affiliated hospitals and schools had to provide contraception coverage in plans for employees, the Blunt amendment resembled a serious ratcheting-up of the culture war debates. But if the GOP calculation was that the Obama administration was in retreat (the president was forced to revise the ruling on Friday under political pressure), Carney's statement suggested the opposite.

Beyond philosophical support for the idea of expanding health care access for women, the White House recognizes that polls are on their side. And in the case of the Blunt amendment, there had already been backlash against Republican overreach before Carney's statement.

"t's unbelievably broad," said Judy Waxman, vice president for health and reproductive rights for the National Women's Law Center. "I hear some people framing this about religious freedom, but I think it's really about undermining health insurance in an extremely dramatic way and letting individual people decide what is moral for everybody they employ or insure."

"Sen. Blunt’s proposal would render the notion of health insurance meaningless, and give businesses and corporations effective veto power over their employee’s health care decisions," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The legislative future for the Blunt amendment was, as of Tuesday afternoon, not entirely clear. The senator had attached his proposal to the massive transportation bill to give it the best chance for passage. It's a "vehicle that this president must sign," Blunt said. "If that doesn’t happen, I hope to get the next president to sign it."

this is really bad can you imagine what the price of this would be?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initially blocked Blunt's amendment on Thursday, calling it "senseless." But on Tuesday he agreed to allow a vote.

"This is a terrible vote for them," said a Senate Democratic aide, explaining why Reid relented. "We are thrilled at the prospect about spending as much time as possible talking about this vote. They are caught between their base and a hard place."

While the Senate has a Democratic majority, a handful of moderate Democrats initially opposed the Obama administration's birth control rule and demanded that it be repealed. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) co-sponsored the Blunt amendment with 19 Republicans, including moderate Scott Brown (R-Mass.). The number of GOP sponsors may grow.

Some Democrats who initially opposed the birth control rule, including Sen. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Sen. Bob Casey, of Pennsylvania, have not commented on Obama's revised decision or indicated how they will vote on Blunt's amendment. Neither senator responded to calls for comment. Other Democrats were outspoken in their concerns about the reach of the amendment's language.

"This would gut the protections that were established in the Affordable Care Act and open a Pandora's box that allows employers to deny coverage for virtually anything they might object to," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). "I think this is really out of touch with where most of Americans are."

In the US pretty much everyone who's employed gets health insurance through your job. The state provides basic emergency care otherwise if you're unemployed etc.

This health care is provided by third party companies independent of the employer you work for and they are mandated to provide a full range of health care. However, this bill if it became law, would mean that your employer could pick and choose what the health care provider would cover you for, without any recourse to you?

Yes, but you will get a bill for it. It's not covered by taxes or anything. Whether you can pay that bill or not is another matter.

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This health care is provided by third party companies independent of the employer you work for and they are mandated to provide a full range of health care. However, this bill if it became law, would mean that your employer could pick and choose what the health care provider would cover you for, without any recourse to you?

In the US pretty much everyone who's employed gets health insurance through your job.

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At present, this is entirely optional on the part of the employer. People working part-time rarely get coverage through their employer. Also, contract workers (temps, for instance, and others like, say, cab drivers) do not typically get healthcare support from their contract employers.

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This health care is provided by third party companies independent of the employer you work for

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Independent in the sense that they are usually a separate business. Employers select an insurer (or sometimes two or three the employee can choose).

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and they are mandated to provide a full range of health care.

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This may vary from state to state. AFAIK, there has not been a requirement for the range of coverage. Often, insurance companies have hedged their bets with things like a thousand-dollar annual deductible before benefits begin to be paid and lifetime limits on how much can be paid for certain types of conditions.

US healthcare has been tailored toward market forces and profitability. AHCA was supposed to correct some of that. How well it works remains to be seen.

The Federal government has no constitutional right to mandate any of this. Period.

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You are wrong about that. Period.

However, perhaps you meant to say that insurance is an unwise method of providing for health care?

Fair enough. I understand how we got where we are today, but, as a point of reference, things generally worked better under the old (e.g. county hospital) system. It was a lot cheaper, partly because there was little paperwork. Of course, how good the care was varied a great deal depending on what county you lived in. How would that work today when travel is so cheap and plentiful?

But, Free Markets just don't do a very good job of providing health care for the poor. Perhaps we should rethink and redesign the whole thing -- that is, how to provide health care for the poor (often includes the elderly).

You guys asked for this when you demanded your unconstitutional health care law. Now part of it tramples the First Amendment and you're just going to have to deal with the repercussions.

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I think the reading is wrong. The requirement, especially the compromise, doesn't require a "tamp[ing]" of the First Amendment. The framing that religious freedom allows Catholic organizations to refuse to provide birth control is flawed.

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Yes there is. There's a very, very specific part of the Constitution that prevents them from mandating these things. It's called the Tenth Amendment, which reads:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

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This is subject to interpretation, as the widely quoted decision from the Supreme Court in United States v. Darby (1931):

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...The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.....

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